One of my current personal goals is to improve my level of social skills. Specifically, I want to be able to meet new people comfortably, feel less self-conscious, and be able to make conversation with people.
I mostly do OK with people I already know, especially if they are friends of mine.
"New" people includes people that I have previously met, but that I do not know particularly well yet.
My usual social experience is to worry before a social event (what will happen, will people like me, maybe I should just stay home, etc.). Then, I feel anxious during the social event (wondering when to say something, being unsure if I am being socially acceptable, feeling self-conscious, feeling out of place, etc.). Finally, I worry after the social event is over (whether something I said was the wrong thing to have said, whether someone was rejecting me, maybe I should just not go back in the future, etc.) Needless to say, this pretty much sucks the life out of socializing! The anxiety occurs before, during, and after any social event.
I have more anxiety during unstructured interactions than structured interactions. For example, if I am in a class, most of that is pretty structured, so there's less anxiety for me in that type of situation. The more I know what to expect, and the more limited the interactions, the better I tend to feel about it.
The other day I went to a social gathering where many of the people were fairly new to me. I went there with the specific idea of going to a relatively unstructured social gathering. I played Scrabble there and talked to people a bit. There were a few times when I noticed how quiet I was. I felt bad about winning the game when I knew someone else really cared about winning a lot more than I did.
I'm going to try doing this again soon. I think it will help my social anxiety and probably my work-related anxieties as well.
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